The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World (Paperback)

~ Helen Fisher (Author) "God created woman..." (more)
Key Phrases: sexual civility, web thinking, ancestral women, United States, United Nations, New York City (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Rutgers University anthropologist Helen Fisher isn't afraid of immodest proposals. The woman who demystified four million years' worth of romance in Anatomy of Love now suggests in The First Sex that evolution favors women. Citing recent research in biology, sociology, sociobiology, and anthropology, Fisher makes a strong case for a near future in which the natural talents of women as thinkers, communicators, and healers, adapted to the age of information, create a new kind of global leadership in business, medicine, and education, skewing the power dynamics of sex and relationships towards the feminine. Women, she says, are contextual thinkers to a far greater degree than men; this "web thinking," as Fisher dubs it, is an asset in a global marketplace. Women are far more talented than men at achieving win-win outcomes in negotiations. On an organizational level, women are less interested in rank and more interested in relationships and networking, an essential attribute in a world without borders. In the arena of education, women have a natural talent for language and self-expression; as healers, they enjoy an emotional empathy with their charges that can and will redefine doctor-patient relationships. And, she predicts, in the next century women will reinvent love by asserting feminine sexuality and creating peer marriages, true partnerships. While Fisher's future may seem idealized, her science and her sociology make for a well-reasoned case that the people Simone de Beauvior once defined as "the second sex" are about to move to the head of the class. --Patrizia DiLucchio --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

No tears spilt over the limited effects of wrinkle cream here! Fisher (The Anatomy of Love), an anthropologist at Rutgers University, synthesizes the insights of her own discipline and those of psychology, sociology, ethnology and biology into good news for women: their biological advantagesAcontextual thinking, interpersonal intuition and long-range planningAmake them better suited to innovate and thrive in the emerging "knowledge economy." In Fisher's scenario, risk-taking males attack with words and play win-lose games, endlessly arguing unbending rules from the playground to the boardroom, while verbal, apologetic females roam in leaderless packs playing win-win games. She believes paternalistic, pyramidal mega-corporations are becoming obsolete as those girls morph into Net-minded women executives who manage virtual corporations with "flat" organizational structures. The playhouse blurs with the office in the decentralized "hyborgs" of the future: "officeless" business webs and virtual classrooms. With breezy optimism, Fisher takes a conservative stance in the nature/nurture debate, cheerfully reducing all of patriarchal history to the result of sex hormone surges with nary a nod to the "social" in "social science." Overly optimistic though her argument may be, it offers a provocative overview of the latest bio-anthropological studies on gender and communication, menopause and romantic love. Agent, Amanda Urban at ICM; 9-city author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1 edition (February 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449912604
• ISBN-13: 978-0449912607
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #515,496 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Science Shows How Short-Sighted and Inaccurate Fisher Was, May 19, 2005

By	"Bobby" (NYC) - See all my reviews

In reference to the reviewer below who states that men are more "right-brained" thinkers, it is interesting to note that modern science is now demonstrating this is true. The May, 2005 issue of Scientific American discusses how men have a more active right-amgydala compared to women, in which men tend to be more central or integrative thinkers. Women in contrast tend to be more left-amgydala dominant, which is more concerned with finer-detailed aspects of cognitive processes. Experiments using the drug Propranolol have shown this striking differences between the sexes. This fits well with experience, where in conversation women tend to focus much more on details that seem superfluous to men who want it put into a context. For men, the "gist" is what is most important. Thus, in direct contradiction to Fisher's claim, it is men that are more the contextual, holistic thinkers.

Another interesting find is that women have a markedly higher orbitofrontal-to-amygdala ratio compared to men. The finding suggest that women on average might be able to then reign in their emotions better than men. This might very well be true, particularly when it comes to violent impulses. For other everyday encounters, however, it would seem judging at the rate of faux pas and other social effronteries committed by both sexes that neither gender seems particularly suited in reigning in less-than-desirable emotions. Given how some companies have had to actually have their human resource departments develop so-called "bully broad" programs, or anger-management for women managers, it would seem women do not have as an advantage the ability to control themselves emotionally. To be fair though, this might be more owed to the past trend of having looked the other way when a woman did something offensive because she was not a man, which normally would have gotten a man into trouble more readily.

At the end of the day, however, when all is said and done, the differences between the sexes boils down to differences between individuals. I tend to think visually. I cannot recall telephone numbers readily numerically but tend to recall them in terms of their geometric arrangement on the touchpad. You can say the number to me but it sometimes just doesn't register until I see in down on paper and have it visually in my head. I can usually control my emotions but I am admittedly an over-emotional and passionate man when it comes to certain political or social stances and I am not at all shy in expressing myself forcibly when a wrong has been done. I can also be impatient when it comes to having to listen to the women in my life having to go through a laundry-list of details to get to the point, although I've grown more tolerant of this as I've gotten older and think it can be quite charming at times.

In contrast, some of the women that have been personally involved in my life have run the gamut from proverbial "tom-boys," who've been keenly interested in mechanical workings and very visual thinkers as well, to women who've proved an amalgam of just about every trite stereotype assigned to women. In short, we deal with people-individuals-not some nebulous average such as "women" or "men" said to then represent its individual members. This point and consideration was thoroughly lost by Fisher, who clearly proves she has a very strong agenda of seeing women ridiculously superior in virtually every realm over man.

I don't fault all women for this error in thinking however; rather Fisher has proved that she is a very lef-amgydala dominant woman unable to see that holistic rich tapestry that is the human race in all its multivariate ways and capacities.

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sketchy evidence, incorrect conclusion, but fun anyway..., May 27, 2004

By	girlboxer5 (Hayward, CA) - See all my reviews

Well, this was another one of those books I picked up to try to understand my mother-in-law better. Thank the gods that I found it used! This book is yet another one of those "women are the nurturers" sorts of books: just the sort of thing to give my MIL a present, after all, remember, "women are tied to mother earth by virtue of their menstrual cycle!" Remember that, and remember it well, for it will guide you in making sense (well maybe not SENSE, per se) of this unfortunate mishmash of sociobiology/genetics/post-feminist ramblings.

You're probably wondering, in light of that last sentence, why I am giving this book three stars instead of the one that you would expect. One of the primary reasons is that, despite the sketchy facts, and the overall silliness, and the evidence that leads one to form the OPPOSITE conclusion to that the author seems to be promoting, this really is an amusing book, especially if you think that women and men are the way they are due to socialization.

Opposite, eh? Well, by page 10, the author has asserted that only 50% of women express the genes that lead to the internetworked functions of both hemispheres in the cortex which results in the traits of "web thinking," "contextual thought," and nurturing that she associates with all women. Women, and only women, are capable of thinking in web-like and interconnected terms, according to the author, and her entire theory of women's pending ascendency in the world economoy is completely based upon these traits. However, there is one HUGE problem: the half of the female population that does NOT express these traits. So, will these spatially inclined, non-verbally fluent women who make up 50% of the female population be left behind in the coming business revolution? It is unclear, since the author never addresses any of these issues.

I am one of those women who doesn't conform to the author's stereotype of women as the networkers; the emotionally literate person who can guess what a person is feeling and what he or she needs; who cares about family and group harmony above all else. In fact, frankly, I loathe emotional confrontation, family gatherings, and I could give a rat's patootie about harmony. I may be verbal and a "web thinker" but I am also rational, unemotional, unexpressive, and non-nurturing (that's not to say that I'm uncaring-- I'm very supportive-- but the other person has to tell me what he or she needs, despite Fisher's assertion that I should just be able to "tell" somehow, psychically).

This founding fact upon which Fisher bases her entire analysis appears to indicate little that would contradict the theory that most gender differences are due to socialization rather than biology. Fisher's subsequent factoids and blurbs throughout the book do little to support her contention that men and women are designed differently in their capacities, or that they have evolved differently enough to justify them taking different roles in society. I thought that dreck had gone out with the feminine mystique, but it looks to be alive and well today, despite all fervent efforts to expunge it.

At least Fisher managed to convey this all in an amusing way (well, to me, anyway. Maybe it was just the absurdity of it all...), which was something that the authors of "The Female Power Within," a book about this same sort of dreck, didn't manage. So, if nothing else, that, at least, made this book somewhat worth reading.

I never did mention what the third star was for. It's for Fisher providing me with a Christmas present for my mother-in-law, which she will love to death. Thank you, Ms. Fisher, for this small boon!

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Anti-male and hurts gender relations including feminism, June 9, 2004

By A Customer

The title basically says what this book is all about. That men are biologically inferior to women at least in the world to come. Now believe it or not, being an "inferior male" like I am, I actually approached this book with an open mind and thougt that if worse comes to worse, it would just humble me a bit more. However as I began to read the book all I saw was a chauvinistic attitude in regard to the research that was really out there. She talks about how the female mind is more creative then the male mind by saying things like how she first noticed this by examining her boyfriends behavior and then goes ahead and presents very biased evidence (of female superiority) without mentioning the loads of evidence that go against her conclusions. There are many books out there such as "Autism and Creativity: Is There a Link Between Autism in Men and Exceptional Ability" which give lots of proof that the extreme male brain often found in autism that many creative geniuses such as the physicist Newton and the poet Yeat's had may surprisingly actually be of great "great creative worth," and not just of secondary status as this author seems to imply. She goes onto say almost undoubtedly that women's "superior creativity" is going to change society. Then why haven't things like this happened yet. For instance Jews have been denied rights almost since the beginning. It was only in the late 1800's to early 1900's that they started to get equal rights under the law in america. Since then almost immediately they began making a huge impact on societal culture. They have been found in the top ranks in the arts and science at a ratio to their actual population size of about 8:1. Also while they make up about 2% of the american population they have won about 27% of nobel prizes awarded to american scientists. Why haven't the same number of these great achievements come even close to these with women (if the author claims they are so superior to men) since they have gotten equal rights and opportunities at about the same time in america as groups such as the jews? Of course, the author doesn't mention things like this and just blames things that may not be to flattering with women on "male oppression" and anything that may make them sound good as part of their "inherent advantage". This subject is, of course very complex and I don't have time to go into it more here. However, neither does the author of "The First Sex" come even close to doing the subject justice in her entire book either, especially for men.